Indian Health Officials Knew About Country’s First Zika Cases But Decided Against Public Outreach To Avoid Panic

May 31, 2017

Washington Post: Officials knew about India’s first Zika case for months. But they didn’t tell anybody.
“Officials in India knew about the country’s first case of Zika virus infection months ago. But they didn’t alert the public because they didn’t want ‘people to start panicking,’ one health official said this week. … Soumya Swaminathan, director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research, confirmed that she and other senior officials of the Health Ministry knew about the diagnoses but decided against doing any public outreach about the Zika threat. … [S]he said the government launched major Zika surveillance campaigns by testing thousands of blood samples and mosquitoes from the area where the first case was detected…” (Doshi, 5/30).